Martin Päckert

• Dr
• Curator of Birds at Senckenberg Society for Nature Research

Geographic barriers and geological historical events may play pivotal roles in driving allopatric divergence among closely related species. Here, we investigate the genomic divergence patterns and ecological niche differentiations of the Willow Tit Poecile montanus and Marsh Tit P. palustris species groups in China, and their ecological niche separ...

Despite large differences in morphology, behavior and lek-mating strategies the birds-of-paradise are known to hybridize occasionally, even across different genera. Many of these bird-of-paradise hybrids were originally described as distinct species based on large morphological differences when compared to recognized species. Nowadays, these specim...

This mini‐review is dedicated to a critical re‐appraisal of the putative hybrid origin of the grey‐cheeked populations of the ashy‐throated parrotbill Sinosuthora alphonsiana that was postulated based on the results of a clustering analysis using a set of five nuclear loci. However, the number of genetically admixed individuals is lower than 10% in...

Song is considered to play an important role in the maintenance of prezygotic reproductive isolation between closely related songbird species. Therefore, song-mixing in a contact zone between closely related species is often considered as evidence of hybridization. The Sichuan Leaf Warbler Phylloscopus forresti and the Gansu Leaf Warbler P. kansuen...

The European Robin Erithacus rubecula is currently treated as a single species with eight subspecies. A previous molecular study and new molecular, morphometric and bioacoustic data reported here strongly support the recognition of three species in this complex: E. rubecula (Europe, North Africa and Macaronesia except the central Canary Islands), E...

Linking organism distribution to climate is key to understanding factors determining species occurrence and evaluating the potential impacts of ongoing climate change. A common analytical tool to assess the link between species and climate is represented by ecological niche modelling and by the tightly related species distribution models (SDMs). Th...

The Western Tragopan Tragopan melanocephalus is endemic to the Western Himalayas and currently listed as ‘Vulnerable’ on the IUCN Red List which also emphasizes a data deficiency regarding its distribution and population size. With this study we provide new data from the Palas Valley, northern Pakistan and deliver a range wide estimate of the speci...

Bird-mediated seed dispersal is crucial for the regeneration and viability of ecosystems, often resulting in complex mutualistic species networks. Yet, how this mutualism drives the evolution of seed dispersing birds is still poorly understood. In the present study we combine whole genome re-sequencing analyses and morphometric data to assess the e...

The cover image is based on the Letter AVONET: morphological, ecological and geographical data for all birds by Tobias et al., https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13898. The sword‐billed hummingbird (Ensifera ensifera) is exquisitely adapted to its trophic niche as an aerial pollinator of flowerings plants (angiosperms) in the high Andes. A new global data...

Functional traits offer a rich quantitative framework for developing and testing theories in evolutionary biology, ecology and ecosystem science. However, the potential of functional traits to drive theoretical advances and refine models of global change can only be fully realised when species-level information is complete. Here we present the AVON...

In the Himalayas, a number of secondary contact zones have been described for vicariant vertebrate taxa. However, analyses of genetic divergence and admixture are missing for most of these examples. In this study, we provide a population genetic analysis for the coal tit (Periparus ater) hybrid zone in Nepal. Intermediate phenotypes between the dis...

A recent article in Ecology and Evolution featured the discovery of hybrid snowcocks (Tetraogallus) and speculated on the hybrid origin of an extant species (T. altaicus). Comprehensive re-analyses of original data from the latter paper reliably refute the phylogenetic hypothesis taken as firm evidence of a past hybridization event in these birds....

Online repositories of DNA sequences are a rich and indispensable source of comparative data for biodiversity research and taxonomic studies. Despite increasingly high data quality of published sequences and associated metadata, particular attention should be paid to taxonomic assignment of DNA sequences, in particular if voucher specimens were not...

Le Troglodyte mignon de Cyrénaïque Troglodytes troglodytes juniperi, un taxon relique isolé depuis les glaciations du Pléistocène. L'aire de répartition du Troglodyte mignon Troglodytes troglodytes, seul représentant de la famille des Troglodytidae dans l'Ancien Monde, s'étend des îles de l'Atlantique Nord (Islande, Grande Bretagne) vers l'est à t...

The loss of biodiversity represents a major global crisis which calls for the need of strong conservation efforts. Most of these efforts are currently being led by research groups, NGOs, educational institutions and governmental action, but in the last decades a new way of approaching conservation, namely citizen science, has become increasingly co...

The Old World sparrows include some of the best-studied passerine species, such as the cosmopolitan human commensal, the house sparrow ( Passer domesticus ) as well as poorly studied narrow-range endemics like the Iago sparrow ( P. iagoensis ) from the Cape Verde Archipelago or specialists from extreme environments like the desert sparrow ( P. simp...

Isoliert im nordöstlichen Libyen lebt ein Zaunkönig, über den nahezu nichts bekannt ist. Nach der Erstbeschreibung durch Ernst Hartert im Jahr 1922 dauerte es fast 100 Jahre, bis die ersten Freilandfotos und Gesangsaufnahmen entstanden. Erstmals fanden jetzt auch phylogenetische Untersuchungen statt. Das Ergebnis überrascht mit Neuigkeiten zu den e...

Encompassing some of the major hotspots of biodiversity on Earth, large mountain systems have long held the attention of evolutionary biologists. The region of the Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau (QTP) is considered a biogeographic source for multiple colonization events into adjacent areas including the northern Palearctic. The faunal exchange between the Q...

Nuthatches of the Holarctic and partly Indo-Malayan genus Sitta have been subject to a number of phylogenetic analyses; however, the most complete phylogenetic hypothesis to date missed several Asian species-level taxa, was based on a limited sampling, and included only one sample per species. Other recent studies were mainly focused on phylogeogra...

The Mediterranean Basin represents a Global Biodiversity Hotspot where many organisms show high inter- and intraspecific differentiation. Extant phylogeographic patterns of terrestrial circum-Mediterranean faunas were mainly shaped through Pleistocene range shifts and range fragmentations due to retreat into different glacial refugia. Thus, several...

In endotherm animals, several traits are related to climate. For example, Bergmann’s rule predicts a decrease in body size within species and across closely related species with increasing temperature, whereas Gloger’s rule states that birds and mammals should be darker in humid and warm environments compared to colder and drier areas. However, it...

Under different environmental conditions, hybridization between the same species might result in different patterns of genetic admixture. Particularly, species pairs with large distribution ranges and long evolutionary history may have experienced several independent hybridization events over time in different zones of overlap. In birds, the divers...

Mitochondrial heteroplasmy is the result from biparental transmission of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to the offspring. In such rare cases, maternal and paternal mtDNA is present in the same individual. Though recent studies suggested that mtDNA heteroplasmy might be more common than previously anticipated, that phenomenon is still poorly documented a...

The Hkakabo Razi region located in northern Myanmar is an Important Bird Area and part of the Eastern Himalayan Biodiversity Hotspot. Within the framework of the World Heritage Convention to enlist the site under criterion (ix) and (x), we conducted a biodiversity assessment for passerine birds using DNA barcoding and other molecular markers. Of th...

Vocal learning has evolved several times independently in mammals and three major orders of birds. Of these only hummingbirds and passerine birds have complex songs, whereas the large vocal repertoires of parrots comprise various call types associated with different behavioral contexts. Generally, bird song has two major functions: territorial defe...

Checklist of the birds of Germany 2018: updates and changes. This article comments on the changes in the new reference list on German birds. Criteria for allocation of species to the various status and distributional categories are explained in detail and comments are given on some individual species. Species newly recorded since the publication of...

This article comments on the changes in the new reference list on German birds. Criteria for allocation of species to the various status and distributional categories are explained in detail and comments are given on some individual species. Species newly recorded since the publication of the previous list (2005) are listed. A few changes of German...

Extant phylogeographical patterns of Palearctic terrestrial vertebrates are generally believed to have originated from glacial range fragmentation. Post-Pleistocene range expansions have led to the formation of secondary contact zones among genetically distinct taxa. For coal tits (Periparus ater), such a contact zone has been localized in Germany....

The Tibeto-Himalayan region, also known as the “Third Pole”, is a unique, vast and fascinating area of Earth. Similar to the North and South Poles, the Tibeto-Himalayan region plays a major role in global climate dynamics including hemispheric-scale climate connections. In particular, the Tibeto-Himalayan highlands influence the Indian and East Asi...

Molecular studies have revealed a number of cases in which traditional assessments of evolutionary relationships have been incorrect. This has implications not only for systematics and taxonomy but also for our understanding of how diversity patterns on Earth have been formed. Here, we use high-throughput sequencing technology to obtain molecular d...

Species assessment of allopatric taxa is problematic. Here we consider the case of the Naung Mung Scimitar Babbler (Jabouilleia naungmungensis) from northern Myanmar. This bird was recognized as a new species in its original description, but was subsequently considered to be a subspecies of J. danjoui. We review the procedures used to make this ass...

The Liberian Greenbul Phyllastrephus leucolepis is known only from the Cavalla Forest, Liberia, where it was seen between 1981 and 1984 but has not been found since the collection of the type, and only, specimen. It is similar to the common and widespread Icterine Greenbul P. icterinus, from which it differs primarily in having white subterminal sp...

Three high-elevation Hyles species of Central Asia have proven difficult to sample, and thus, only a limited number of specimens are available for study. Ancient DNA techniques were applied to sequence two mitochondrial genes from ‘historic’ museum specimens of Hyles gallii, Hyles renneri and Hyles salangensis to elucidate the phylogenetic relation...

The Yellow-bellied Tit Pardaliparus venustulus is a species of forests and woodlands previously thought to be endemic to south-east and north-east China. On 25 September 2013, a juvenile Yellow-bellied Tit was caught in a mist-net located in a deciduous grove at Muraviovka Park, Far East Russia. Whilst this bird was being ringed, a pair of adult Ye...

A recent full species-level phylogeny of tits, titmice and chickadees (Paridae) has placed the Chinese endemic black-bibbed tit (Poecile hypermelaenus) as the sister to the Palearctic willow tit (P. montanus). Because this sister-group relationship is in striking disagreement with the traditional affiliation of P. hypermelaenus close to the marsh t...

Intraspecific variation of passerine song may influence mate choice and consequently provides a potential mechanism for premating reproductive isolation in birds. Notable geographic variation of songs is particularly common in widespread bird species, such as the coal tit Periparus ater (Aves, Passeriformes, Paridae) having a large trans-Palearctic...

Intraspecific variation of passerine song may influence mate choice and consequently provides a potential mechanism for premating reproductive isolation in birds. Notable geographic variation of songs is particularly common in widespread bird species, such as the coal tit Periparus ater (Aves, Passeriformes, Paridae) having a large trans-Palearctic...

Figure S1. Phenotypical diagnosis of target sparrow species in Algerian populations; A) five major plumage traits that are distinctive for house sparrows (B: P. domesticus) and Spanish sparrows (C: P. hispaniolensis) but are intermediate to a variable degree in a considerable number of putative hybrid individuals (D) per local population (P. domest...

Figure S2. Phenotypical comparison of Mediterranean island populations (Sicily, Ustica, Lampedusa) of the Italian hybrid form, P. italiae.

Figure S3. Haplotype network of European and North African sparrow populations (P. domesticus, P. hispaniolensis, P. italiae and North African hybrids) based on 707 bp of the mitochondrial ND2; populations of origin are color‐coded for each haplotype.

Table S1. Results of principal component analysis (PCA) of four biometric measurements (length of body, wing, bill and tarsus) from male and female house sparrows (P. domesticus), Spanish sparrows (P. hispaniolensis) and their hybrids; eigenvalues and factor loadings for the first two principal components (PC1, PC2) based on a covariance matrix and...

A stabilized hybrid form of the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) and the Spanish sparrow (P. hispaniolensis) is known as Passer italiae from the Italian Peninsula and a few Mediterranean islands. The growing attention for the Italian hybrid sparrow and increasing knowledge on its biology and genetic constitution greatly contrast the complete lack...

Contents of issue 22 / Inhalt der 22. Lieferung Preface of issue 22/Vorwort zur 22. Lieferung J. Martens, M. Päckert Integrative taxonomy of Seicercus spectacled M. Päckert, Y.-H. Sun, A. T. Peterson, warblers for mapping species’ distributions P. Holt, P. Strutzenberger, J. Martens Gallinago stenura S. Ernst Seicercus burkii J. Martens, P. Hol...

Competing systematic hypotheses have placed the Tibetan endemic Przevalski's Finch Urocynchramus pylzowi either with the Old World buntings (Emberizidae) or with the cardueline finches (Fringillidae, Carduelinae). Recent studies based on limited genetic evidence instead suggest an isolated position within Passeroidea and advocate a separate family,...

Aim For terrestrial organisms, a faunal transition zone between the Indochinese and Sundaic regions is delimited north of the Isthmus of Kra on the Thai‐Malay Peninsula. We used a mitochondrial marker to test the predicted location of intraspecific north–south divides for four species of bulbuls ( Pycnonotus ). Phylogenetic relationships among Thai...

In this study we reconstructed the phylogenetic relationships of a narrow-range Tibetan endemic, Emberiza koslowi, to its congeners and shed some light on intraspecific lineage separation of further bunting species from Far East Asia and along the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau in China. The onset of the Old World bunting radiation was dated...

As one of the most prominent topographical features on Earth, the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau (QTP) underwent a long and complex history of the QTP uplift from the collision of the Indian and the Eurasian plates to the present. At its southern and southeastern margins, it is flanked by the most significant hotspots of organismic diversity of the northe...

Some modeling studies indicated that the past distributions of species in East Asia during the Last Interglacial (LIG) and Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) periods differ from those of European and North American species and the deviant Asian distribution pattern is known under the term ‘pre-LGM expansion’. It represents the unusually similar distributio...

Biodiversity is unevenly distributed on Earth and hotspots of biodiversity are often associated with areas that have undergone orogenic activity during recent geological history (i.e. tens of millions of years). Understanding the underlying processes that have driven the accumulation of species in some areas and not in others may help guide priorit...

A recent German anti-Darwinist book publication cheekily challenges what its author, M. Beleites, denounces a today's reductionist biological approach - which in his sense cross-the-board includes all kind of academic teaching and research in the field of biology and above all genetic analyses. The author quotes an ornithological article by Otto Kl...

Songs in passerine birds are important for territory defense and mating. Speciation rates in oscine passerines are so high, due to cultural evolution, that this bird lineage makes up half of the extant bird species. Leaf warblers are a speciose Old-World passerine family of limited morphological differentiation, so that songs are even more importan...

The Apodini swifts in the Old World serve as an example for a recent radiation on an intercontinental scale on the one hand. On the other hand they provide a model for the interplay of trait and distributional range evolution with speciation, extinction and trait transition rates on a low taxonomic level (23 extant taxa). Swifts are well adapted to...

The Apodini swifts in the Old World serve as an example for a recent radiation on an intercontinental scale on the one hand. On the other hand they provide a model for the interplay of trait and distributional range evolution with speciation, extinction and trait transition rates on a low taxonomic level (23 extant taxa). Swifts are well adapted to...

Background According to current taxonomy only three out of 27 Sinohimalayan leaf warbler species (Phylloscopidae) are considered genetically uniform across their entire breeding range along the Southeastern margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, the Buff-barred Warbler (Phylloscopus pulcher) being one of them. Because marked differentiation among H...

We confirmed the first breeding record of the native Asian yellow bittern (Ixobrychus sinensis) in the Western Palearctic by genetic barcoding and morphometric analysis. In 2012 three small herons had been captured in Wadi Lahami at the western Red Sea coast of Egypt and these individuals had been tentatively determined as yellow bitterns. From blo...

Tropical mountains are hotspots of biodiversity, but the factors that generate this high diversity remain poorly understood. To identify possible mechanisms that influence avian species assemblages in the tropical Andes, we studied the functional and phylogenetic diversity and the structure of species assemblages of an avian feeding guild. We analy...

Global climate change is one of the major driving forces for adaptive shifts in migration and breeding phenology and possibly impacts demographic changes if a species fails to adapt sufficiently. In Western Europe, pied flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca) have insufficiently adapted their breeding phenology to the ongoing advance of food peaks within...

True rosefinches (Aves: Carpodacus) are restricted to Eurasia, and 19 out of 25 species occur in the Sino- Himalayas, making this the likely centre of origin. To test this hypothesis, suggested species splits had to be evaluated and potential further cryptic diversity unravelled. A taxon-complete dated molecular phylogeny was reconstructed using ma...

We provide a short overview of current research activities in scientific ornithological collections. Such collection-based research covers a wide range of approaches and methods including faunistic, ecological, molecular systematic and conservational aspects. We demonstrate that many molecular and computer-based approaches substantially rely on dat...

We reconstructed a molecular phylogeny for all four species of the wren-babbler genus Pnoepyga and added a comparative analysis of their territorial songs. The genus is divided into two species pairs which can also be distinguished by ecological and bioacoustic features. One species pair, Pnoepyga albiventer and P. formosana, occupies the higher fo...

The Yellow Bittern Ixobrychus sinensis is a common breeding bird of the southern East Palaearctic and Orientalis, also occurring on many islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. During taxonomic studies in the mangroves on the Red Sea in Egypt it was recorded for the first time in April 2012 for the Western Palaearctic and Africa. Further investig...

Much attention has been paid to the molecular phylogeny of holocephalan fishes during recent years, but sampling was very low and not all genera were examined. This study offers an extended sampling of species from all known genera to clarify their phylogeny and to provide an estimate of the time of origin of extant holocephalan taxa. Three mitocho...

We analyse phylogeny, systematics and biogeography of slider turtles (Trachemys spp.) using sequence data of four mitochondrial genes (3242 bp) and five nuclear loci (3396 bp) of most South American and southern Central American taxa and representatives of northern Central American, West Indian and North American slider species (16 species and subs...

Aim Zoogeographic patterns in the Himalayas and their neighbouring Southeast Asian mountain ranges include elevational parapatry and ecological segregation, particularly among passerine bird species. We estimate timings of lineage splits among close relatives from the north Palaearctic, the Sino-Himalayan mountain forests and from adjacent Southeas...

We supplement a previously published mitochondrial DNA data set of grass snake sequences (ND1, ND2, ND4, cyt b, in total 3,806 bp) with sequences of Corso-Sardinian and Tuscan specimens and infer their phylogeny using Bayesian, maximum likelihood and maximum parsimony methods. In addition, we estimate divergence times of grass snake clades using a...

We provide a molecular phylogeny for Old World swifts of genera Apus and Tachymarptis (tribe Apodini) based on a taxon-complete sampling at the species level. Phylogenetic reconstructions were based on two mitochondrial (cytochrome b, 12S rRNA) and three nuclear markers (introns of fibrinogen and glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase plus anonym...

Quaternary climatic oscillations have been considered decisive in shaping much of the phylogeographic structure around the Mediterranean Basin. Within this paradigm, peripheral islands are usually considered as the endpoints of the colonization processes. Here, we use nuclear and mitochondrial markers to investigate the phylogeography of the blue t...

We investigated relationships among Asian flapshell turtles by using 2286 bp of mitochondrial DNA for phylogenetic reconstructions and relaxed molecular clock calculations. Currently three taxa are recognized, the unspotted species Lissemys scutata and L. punctata, with the unspotted subspecies L. p. punctata and the spotted subspecies L. p. anders...

Since in oscine birds song divergence often leads to premating reproductive isolation, we asked which factors drive the evolution of song in a widespread species, the coal tit Parus ater. Based on an almost taxon-complete phylogeny we correlated song divergence with morphometric (ecology), genetic (time), and geographic distances (separation). We f...

We analyzed passerine biodiversity and phylogeography in the Sino-Himalayan region with respect to neighboring areas, especially the Siberian taiga zone to the north and tropical Asia southeast of the Himalayas and mountainous parts of southwest China. Fresh results, informative about evolutionary processes in that area, were obtained mainly by the...

Quaternary climatic oscillations have been considered decisive in shaping much of the phylogeographic structure around the Mediterranean Basin. Within this paradigm, peripheral islands are usually considered as the endpoints of the colonization processes. Here, we use nuclear and mitochondrial markers to investigate the phylogeography of the blue t...